Florida breathes sigh of relief as it avoids the worst of Dennis

Much of the Florida panhandle was drying itself off yesterday and breathing a sigh of relief after Hurricane Dennis rolled ashore on Sunday with less force than had been feared.

The first named hurricane of the season swamped homes, ripped off roofs and felled power lines and trees, but did not repeat the widespread destruction of September's Hurricane Ivan.

"We dodged the bullet on the most part, although our beach has suffered badly again," Sara Comander, a spokeswoman for Walton county east of Pensacola, told Reuters.

Only one death was attributed directly to the storm, when a man in Fort Lauderdale was electrocuted as he stepped on a power line brought down by strong wind.

The Caribbean did not get off so lightly last week: Dennis killed 10 people in Cuba and 22 in Haiti before it moved up the Gulf of Mexico.

In Florida some of the worst flooding was far to the east in the tiny fishing town of St Marks, near Tallahassee, where chest-deep water flowed through the streets. Boats rescued people stranded in their homes by the rapidly rising water.

But before it hit land on Santa Rosa island just east of Pensacola on Sunday afternoon, Dennis weakened from a powerful category 4 hurricane to a category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

With wind speeds of 120mph, Dennis was as strong as Ivan, which came ashore in almost exactly the same spot last September, killing 25 people and causing more than $14bn (£8bn) of damage. Sunday's storm was smaller while the eye of the hurricane did not hit any major towns or cities. But George Bush declared Florida, Mississippi and Alabama disaster areas, making them eligible for federal aid. One insurance company estimated that Dennis had caused up to $2.5bn damage in the US.